Now, of course I realize that we never read the small print on the back of our tickets, most likely because there is so much of it and it is so small … that is, we are drowning in the excess of difficult jargon and dammit, we are here to be entertained!

So I thought it would be useful to take a look and parse the legalese — or break the ticket down, to use the sports vernacular. Here we go:

This ticket is a revocable license.

You don't own anything. You are licensing the use of their space for a limited period of time, and that right can be taken away from you at any time.

The holder, on behalf of the holder and any minor accompanying the older (individually and collectively, the "Holder"), agrees to all of the terms hereof and all arena rules and standards of conduct posted in or about the arena.

Even though you didn't read this, and even though the constant barrage of advertising at the arena prevents you from seeing any posted rules, you agree to our terms.

The Holder agrees not to transmit, distribute, or sell (or aid in transmitting, distributing or selling) any description, account, picture, video, audio or other form of reproduction of the event and any surrounding activities (in whole or in part) for which this ticket is issued (the "Event").

This seems to lead a lot of credence to the fact that the true purpose of the sports stadium is to act as factory for the I3-manufacturing process. Not coincidentally, it is the first major sin listed in the legalese of the ticket.

This ticket may not be used for any form of commercial or trade purposes, including, but not limited to, advertising, promotions, contests or sweepstakes, without the express written consent of the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club and the NBA.

We'll control that, thank you very much.

The Holder may be refused admission or expelled if his/her presence or conduct is deemed objectionable, in which case this license is cancelled and the Holder waives all claims, including any claim to a refund of the ticket price.

It is interesting that despite the precise language used in all legal contexts to specifically outline something, they leave in an extremely ambiguous phrase such as "is deemed objectionable". What does that mean? Who decides? When I was at the Raptors game last week, an usher barked at a patron to take off his hat during the national anthem. Is that behaviour (leaving the hat on), which was objectionable to the usher, sufficient grounds for ejection? What about if the guy had mouthed back to the usher to mind his own business? What about if such an act of "non-patriotism" took place right after a terrorist attack? What about if he had brown skin? Just wondering …

A valid ticket must be produced upon entering the arena and at any time thereafter upon request.

Restricted items, including the following, are prohibited from being brought into the arena: alcoholic beverages, illegal drugs, bottles, cans, food products, air horns and all forms of audio/video recording or transmitting devices.

You will not cut into the rents we earn through our concessions, which the average patron would consider grossly overpriced, but which the economist would believe are priced just right given the time and location utility they fulfill.

Breach of any of the foregoing, or the refunding to the Holder of the printed purchase price of this ticket, shall automatically terminate any rights that the Holder may have hereunder; shall render illegal and unauthorized the Holder's use of the ticket for any purpose; and shall authorize the Toronto Raptors or the NBA to withdraw the ticket, refuse admission to the arena, or eject the Holder from the arena.

Break our rules and you're gone. We can also keep the ticket so you cannot even see in retrospect what your rights were.

Breach of any of the foregoing shall also subject the Holder to all legal remedies available to the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club, the NBA or their respective affiliates.

Plus, we'll sue your sweet ass if we feel like it.

Resale or attempted resale of this ticket at a price higher than that printed herein is grounds for seizure or cancellation without refund or other compensation.

Once again, don't even think about trying to undermine our monopoly rents by scalping these tickets.

The Holder grants permission to the NBA and the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club and its affiliates (and their respective licensees and agents) to utilize the Holder's image, likeness, actions and statements in any live or recorded audio, video, or photographic display or other transmission, exhibition, publication or reproduction made of, or at, the Event without further authorization or compensation.

This is the one that completely blew me away. Were you aware that, despite how closely they guard the image rights of their own assets (ie. the players), they can take your image or voice or whatever, and do whatever the hell they feel like with it — all without having to pay you a dime? But we want to be on camera …

THE HOLDER OF THIS TICKET VOLUNTARILY ASSUMES ALL RISK AND DANGER of personal injury (including death) and all hazards arising from, or related in any way to, the Event, whether occurring prior to, during, or after the Event, howsoever caused and whether by negligence or otherwise.

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What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Milan Kundera

sportsBabel

sportsBabel examines the aesthetics, politics and poetics of sport and physical culture, weaving between materiality, information, intuition and intellect. The notes posted here should be understood as emerging from an ongoing program of research-creation.

Threads of inquiry include: the security-entertainment complex and the militarization of sport; mediated sport as a spectrum of interactive possibility; the experiential qualities of postmodern sporting spaces; the cyborg body athletic manifest as mobile social subject; and the potential politics of a sporting multitude.

sportsBabel is produced by Sean Smith, an artist, writer and athlete living in Toronto, Canada. He holds a PhD in Media Philosophy from the European Graduate School in Switzerland and has exhibited and performed internationally as part of the Department of Biological Flow, an experimental collaboration in arts-based research inquiry with Barbara Fornssler. He was the inaugural Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario in 2011-12, a participant at the Wood Land School – The Exiles residency in 2013, and one of the curators of Channel Surf, a 200km canoe journey and open platform for the arts that was one of 5 projects worldwide accepted to Project Anywhere in 2015.

He is currently adjunct faculty in wearable sculpture at OCAD University, a sessional lecturer on cartographies of the control society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and one of the founding members of the Murmur Land Studios curatorial collective -- an experimental field school initiative begun in 2017 that offers event-based pedagogy in art, philosophy, kinaesthetics, ecology and camping community for the post-anthropocene era.

Sean's poetic work has appeared in Brave New Word, One Imperative, a glimpse of, Inflexions, the sexxxpo pwoermds anthology and the Why Hasn't JB Already Disappeared tribute anthology to Jean Baudrillard. He has performed poetic-philosophy work at Babel, Tuning Speculation, the Blackwood Gallery's Running with Concepts conference, and the Art in the Public Sphere speakers series at the University of Western Ontario's Department of Visual Arts. His first full manuscript, Overclock O'Clock, was published by Void Front Press in 2017, while three other chapbooks, tununurbununulence vOo.rtex, Verbraidids, and Syncopation Studies have been released in the past year.

sportsBabel was the basis for the Global Village Basketball project (2009-2011), which was an unfunded 24-hour basketball event that attempted to network together various pickup games from around the world into one meta-game; at its peak, players from 9 different countries joined the game to collectively score over 2,000 baskets in a meta Red vs. Blue contest. His other sports-art work has been presented in such varied spaces as HomeShop in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, the Main Squared community arts festival in Toronto, SenseLab's Generating the Impossible research-creation event in Montreal, and in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art during Nuit Blanche.

His latest project, Aqua Rara, weaves a practice of embodied art-philosophistry together with athletics and kairotic time to work as a performance-text between myriad water ecologies, swimming gestures, and watching the Aquarium Channel endlessly on loop.

department of biological flow

The Department of Biological Flow is a project of research-creation by Sean Smith and Barbara Fornssler exploring the concept of the moving human body as it is integrated with broader information networks of signal and noise.

The reference is from George Lucas' epic 1971 movie, THX 1138, in which a state-controlled intensification of communication processes manages every facet of daily life in a futuristic society, regulating the flux of all human subjects in work, leisure and love.

Though the Department exists in homage to Lucas’ vision, our consideration of biological flow seeks to reinvigorate the agency of the (in)human subject in its negotiations with economic and political structures both material and immaterial.